Contents

The singer tells the story of a friend who has never given up on his love. He keeps old letters and photos from back in the day, and hangs on to hope that she would "come back again." The song reaches its peak in the chorus, revealing that he indeed stopped loving her – when he died. She attends his funeral.

The song featured Sherrill's signature 'Countrypolitan' style of the period, featuring a lush background string arrangement and a choir providing background vocals.

According to producer Billy Sherrill and Jones himself, the singer did not like the song when he first heard it. In Bob Allen's biography George Jones: The Life and Times of a Honky Tonk Legend, Sherrill states "he thought it was too long, too sad, too depressing and that nobody would ever play it...He hated the melody and wouldn't learn it." Sherrill also claims that Jones frustrated him by continually singing the song to the melody of the Kris Kristofferson hit "Help Me Make It Through the Night". In the 1989 video documentary Same Ole Me, Sherrill recalls a heated exchange during one recording session: "I said 'That's not the melody!' and he said 'Yeah, but it's a better melody.' I said 'It might be - Kristofferson would think so too, it's his melody!'" In the same documentary, Sherrill claims that Jones was in such bad physical shape during this period that "the recitation was recorded 18 months after the first verse was" and added that the last words Jones said about "He Stopped Loving Her Today" was "Nobody'll buy that morbid son of a bitch".